The invention relates generally to computerized temperature control, and more generally to computerized remote control of communicating thermostats.
Portions of the disclosure of this patent document contain material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever. The following notice applies to the software and data as described below and in the drawings:
Copyright 1999, Honeywell Inc., All Rights Reserved.
Managing temperature and other environmental conditions in commercial facilities is a task that is of importance both for the comfort of those using the facility and for the owner of such a facility who wishes to minimize operating cost. A facility""s temperature is generally regulated such that the environment is comfortable for customers, or is suitable for whatever other purpose the facility may serve. But, the manager or owner of the facility will seek to minimize the expense of providing such an environment, and so seek to carefully control the way in which heating or air conditioning equipment is used.
Facility equipment operators may not only seek to regulate temperature to a specific and predetermined suitable temperature, but may seek to vary temperature with time of day or week, or to vary parameters other than temperature. For example, a school that is only open between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. on weekdays may choose to maintain a comfortable temperature of 68 degrees between 7:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., but let the temperature decrease to 60 degrees at other times of day and on weekends.
Furthermore, an owner of a facility that allows indoor parking may seek to not only control the air temperature of the parking area, but to control the level of pollutants such as carbon monoxide in the air by monitoring pollutant levels and running ventilation equipment to remove pollutants when needed.
In some facilities, heating and air conditioning equipment controls may allow customization of more detailed functions of the climate control system, in order to better control the system efficiency. Fans in heating or cooling systems may be programmed to run for a period beyond when the heating or cooling device is active, and may be set to run for specified minimum and maximum times. Activation of these climate control systems may be dependent upon the temperature falling out of a specified range of temperatures, and such activation may be triggered differently by each of a number of thermostats within the facility. Different degrees of control over the climate control system may also be allowed at each thermostat""s manual controls, such that those people using a particular area of a facility may only adjust the climate control system within predetermined operational specifications.
But, even setting minor parameters of typical climate control systems such as altering time twice a year for daylight savings time usually requires a professional climate control system worker to visit the facility and program the changed data. Setting multiple thermostats in a facility can require further work, visiting each thermostat in question and making or verifying appropriate settings. The present invention addresses the need for a solution to these and other problems.
A computerized system is provided that shows a visual representation of thermostat programming information and provides context-sensitive help. The system automatically detects communicating thermostats on a network upon starting, and gives a visual representation of the programming stages available for programming a thermostat. The system further provides a visual representation of programming details of a user-selected programming stage while providing the representation of all programming stages, and allows selection of programming stages for display or modification of programming details in any order. The system also provides context-sensitive help for each of the programming stages and for each of the programming details of each programming stage when selected, in the form of instruction text and pop-up clarifying clauses.